Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said on Thursday that he phoned President Obama to urge reforms to the government’s surveillance practices. “The US government should be the champion for the internet, not a threat. They need to be much more transparent about what they’re doing, or otherwise people will believe the worst,”Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post. “I’ve called President Obama to express my frustration over the damage the government is creating for all of our future. Unfortunately, it seems like it will take a very long time for true full reform.”

Is this a joke? Did Zuckerman really call the President to complain about privacy? What a joke. Facebook follows you everywhere. There are no secrets and he is complaining to the President! These people have no sense of reality.

It is a beautiful day in Montana, sun is shining and it is 51. Almost spring!!!!!!!

Have never had any interest at all because of the creepy stalking that Facebook engages in.

I know CBS and 60 minutes is on everyone’s “boycott” list, but they did a segment on online Data Brokers last Sunday. These private companies (Experian, Acxiom, and another I can’t recall at the moment) know everything about internet users. What medications they take, what physical ailments they have, their life histories, etc. Really very evasive.

All this NSA nonsense is a smoke screen for these private plunderers to keep on their merry way, digging deeper and deeper into consumers’ lives. Not sure if the segment is online, but was eye-opening, to say the least.

The most galling part was at the end, one of the Data Broker execs flatly stated that self-regulation works!

I so agree. They are trying to say what the NSA is doing is so much worse that these private companies. What a joke all this is. I just want to take people by the shoulders, shake them and tell the to wake up before it is too late. I’ll see if I can find that segment. That will be good to have in my tool folder.

Not suprised about Duke and NC officials. The Repubs are all for the polluters.

The dates in this article are very confusing to me. Today is Thursday. It said they voted Friday. Top of article says updated March 13, 2014, but below pic says “Sahil Kapur – March 15, 2013, 3:16 PM EDT”. I didn’t go any further – didn’t want to further confuse my old mind.

I found it most confusing, especially after reading earlier that the deal had only been passed by the Senate today. Of course, I don’t always pay attention to all the details, so I might have missed something important.

The tweets I see on TOD usually see the time as it is in my world – not sure how that impacts anything cause the date at TPM says 15th March – which is Saturday?? So do the pundits (and Kapur writes GOP support all the time) write the results before the votes? Does he talk to Boehner??

Hi, TS, same questions I would have if I gave the matter more serious thought. Maybe the article was posted earlier than it should have? I gave up after being confused by the dates – figured I’d wait and see what happens tomorrow.

Hopef, are you sure it’s @lrozen? Just kidding. I glanced briefly over her timeline a minute ago and I can’t really believe my eyes. It doesn’t seem like the relatively sane person I WAS following around the time the Iran-US negotiations were hot!

Indeed vc, I’ve been alarmed and disturbed by her sudden change in reporting style. It’s no longer objective & professional as when I first started following her, but instead filled with unsourced opinions, innuendo, snide remarks, etc. :(

That’s what surprised me tonight – I haven’t been on much over the last couple of weeks and when I was I was casting an eye on Ukraine, so I hadn’t been following her as closely as during the time of the Iran breakthrough. I’m shocked by a couple of the tweets I read over there tonight. /smh/ Frankly, I’m still wondering if it IS her.

One of the things that alarmed me this week was when she re-tweeted an announcement from Wikileaks about Snowden. And she’s been freely re-tweeting stuff from one of Snowden/Greenwald cultists – “emptywheel.”

I don’t know, Japa. I tend to avoid the seduction idea/references, but I am seriously thrown my the tone I got in a few of today’s tweets. As Hopefruit mentioned in one of her answers to me, I did actually use to think of Rozen as rational and professional. What is WRONG with U.S media?

Attacking this POTUS is a badge of DC/NY Pundits Form of acceptance. Completing a formal Initiation. The Sorority Elites Cheer in Jubilation. The Right of Passage. They raise their status and their income is greatly enhanced.

LOL! That’s a possibility, you never know. I’m also thinking she probably tried (and failed) to get an interview with someone on PBO’s Foreign policy/Nat Security team, perhaps SOS Kerry, and has held a grudge?

JOB, that’s really a big step forward that’s made possible by the internet. Years ago, there were no mechanisms for rapid responses from ordinary people as you know. Some days it seems like the hits just keep coming and you have to keep batting back constantly.

Very disappointed with @LRozen’s tweet (posted by HF2 on last thread).

These young reporters have no concept of the threat of a nuclear war, or of any war on our soil (Sept. 11th is the only modern frame of reference, and we botched our response so badly that even the most idealistic youth have turned into hardened cynics).

Laura knows better. That all aspects and consequences of actions by all players need to be taken into consideration. Exhaustion by the whining media is nothing if there’s an actual NATO war in Europe.

When I saw that piece about Zuckerberg calling the President I had to think for a minute what day it was; I thought it must be April 1st and this was someone’s joke.

Zuckerberg must think we are all stupid. I guess some out there are. Too privileged to have experienced REAL oppression, these idiots have to make up something to be outraged about. My guess is that Zuckerberg knows better but wants to deflect attention from what his company is actually doing with its users info.

This is the same Facebook that keeps a record of the things its users type and then delete?
(Slate had an article about this back in December. Tried to post the link to the article but couldn’t).

I have never been and don’t plan to ever be on Facebook for this and many other reasons like it. That company is one of the worst privacy violators out there.

The US government needs a warrant to investigate you; Facebook just records and sells your info to the highest bidder.

“Worse, they are not only negative themselves, but their rhetoric also serves to help the Republicans in their strategy to depress turnout, by trashing Democrats with far more force than they trash the country’s real problem which, again, is the GOP. This is because they value their own ideological purity more highly than actual progressive politics, where the country moves forward and makes thing better for everyone. As such, they would rather vote for a third party candidate who says all the right things, but who has zero chance of winning, than to vote for a viable candidate who “only” agrees with them 80 percent of the time”

I’ve said that one of the key things they never quite understand is that they’re not “the base,” or even “a base” of the Democratic Party. Given their absence when it comes to voting, or bothering to be active inside the party, it’s rather obvious.

“……Standard Bank said Washington is determined to make Russia pay for tearing up the post-Cold War settlement and undermining the architecture of nuclear non-proliferation. It is drawing up stealth sanctions to freeze Russia out of global finance.

These will be spearheaded by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, which will enforce compliance of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The next step is to place Russia on the “grey list” for money laundering. “This would prevent global banks from dealing with Russian counterparts. Washington is tightening the noose. No bank is going to mess with the SEC,” said Mr Ash……”

As far as ‘stealth’, this is bs. PBO is only doing exactly what he said he would do. He preferred a different outcome, and was very clear about that preference. He always does what he says he will do. Don’t mess with him.

It’s been so long since diplomacy has been actually used…….that people who want instant results get “bored” by work. Diplomacy is work. John Kerry and Barack Obama know this. President Obama is following exactly what he said pre-2008 and every day since then.
I’m convinced people (MSM, pundits, certain Senators do NOT listen to him. He has been incredibly consistent since 2002! when he talked about the coming invasion of Iraq. This consistency and doing what one says is so rare, that people still have not caught on to it.

It has taken PBO a while to get the world to the place where diplomacy can be used, to bring all the parties necessary to the right place.
I am SO glad John Kerry is SOS. He knows, and admits that diplomacy is hard work, but as he said, persistence pays off.

Little girls like Laura Rozen need to shut their mouths and watch and learn! It may be “boring” how sad that remark is, but most real work is boring to the onlooker. You can bet it’s not boring to PBO, or Kerry, or Rice, or Power or…….anyone actually involved in WORKING!!!

This whole situation with Ukraine shows that Putin also is not patient, and not prepared for the real grown up work of governing such a large country. He is of the GWB “cowboy” mentality, and we know what that accomplished.

First of all, I don’t believe for a second that Klein didn’t know very well what his new hire wrote. They’re both bigots. Second, I know liberals are seen as many things, but stupid is not one of them.

“….It has become cliché to lament the decline of American power, and Washington’s inability to get what it wants in geopolitically fraught places like Syria and Ukraine only reinforces the point. Yet the diplomatic effort in eastern Congo, where the U.S. government has much leverage but little national interest, offers a tentative example of American power actually appearing to accomplish something, and an instruction in how sustained diplomatic coercion can push a long and bloody conflict toward something resembling peace—especially when nobody’s paying attention. “The real lesson here,” John Kerry told me, “is that diplomacy works, and persistence pays off.”………….

BTW, I caught upChuck on @Lawrence last night, not even trying to hide his contempt for our President. Is it my imagination, or is upChuck looking more and more like Gollum every day? (Huge LOTR fan here, just amazed and grateful for the wonderful world that JRRTolkien created by sheer imagination, scholarly ways and talent.)

This tweet should be bookmarked and its message used to propel Dems to #Landslide2014 (from a self-professed Political Scientist):

Democrats should not waver on Obama care. If they do it will totally turn off Obama coalition and you will lose big in 14'.

// The son of former New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine killed himself in a Mexico City hotel, sources told The Post on Thursday.
Jeffrey Corzine, 31, was the youngest of Corzine’s three children with ex-wife and childhood sweetheart Joanne Corzine.
Sources said he had been depressed recently. The cause of death was not released. His mom and other family members declined comment.
“Mr. Corzine is obviously devastated by this tragic loss,” said his spokesman, Steven Goldberg. The younger Corzine had a history of substance-abuse problems and had been in and out of rehab, sources said. //

BERLIN (AP) — German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Thursday that Russia risks “massive” political and economic consequences if Moscow does not enter into “negotiations that achieve results” over the situation in Ukraine.

In an address to Parliament, Merkel told lawmakers the only way out of the crisis is through diplomacy and assured them that “the use of the military is no option.”

But, she said, the European Union and other western nations would soon freeze bank accounts and implement travel restrictions if Russia refused to enter “negotiations that achieve results and aren’t just a play for time.”

If Moscow does not begin to “deescalate” the situation then, Merkel said the 28 European Union nations, the United States and other trans-Atlantic partners were prepared to take even stronger measures that would hit Russia economically.

“In 1710, Ukraine offered the world a constitution that established a democratically ordered system of checks and balances among three branches of government, drawing on principles of natural law. This was 77 years before the adoption of the U.S. Constitution incorporating the same principles.”